1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a signature authenticating apparatus, a signature authenticating method, and a signature authenticating program for entering a handwritten signature and determining whether or not the signer is the person in question, and to a storage medium storing the signature authenticating program.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is a long-established practice for identifying a person to use a handwritten signature given by the person in question and to confirm the same through visual inspection. More recently, as an alternative to identifying means based on a password on a computer, a technique of identifying a person by authenticating a handwritten-entered signature by use of a computer has been conceived.
The concept of authenticating a handwritten signature by use of a computer comprises the steps of electrically converting time coordinates and writing pressure into machine-readable data by entering the signature into a digitizer, comparing the same with registered signature data of that person previously registered in a dictionary (signature data recording section), calculating an evaluation value representing the difference between the entered signature and the registered signature data registered in the dictionary, and determining whether or not the signer is that person in question depending upon whether or not this evaluation value is over a predetermined threshold value.